Effect of Self-Efficacy and Distributive Justice on Employees ’ Performance in Federal Capital Territory Area Councils , Abuja

The well-being of every organization and institution lies on the performance of its employees. Local government area councils are created to render services and to address the social needs of the people. These services are highly essential to the sustenance of people at this level. However, when workers who are employed to discharge all these services on behalf of the government to the people are unable to perform their jobs as expected, problems arises as the expected social and economic service are barely executed. The study aimed at examining the effect of self-efficacy and distributive justice on employees’ performance in FCT area councils, Abuja. A survey research design was used and primary data were gathered through the use of questionnaire. A total of 217 returned questionnaires were analyzed. Structural equation model was used to analyze data using Smartpls2. Findings reveal that distributive justice and self-efficacy have a positive and significant effect on employees’ performance. The study, therefore, recommends that the operation of distribution justice should be encourage at the grass root level since the employees are motivated by their reward at the end of the day; Self efficacy  of the employees’ should also be improve through effective initiatives so as to motivate employees to perform their jobs optimally.


Introduction
Employees' Performance is the pillars upon which every organization stands and achieves its goals and objectives. However, these goals and objectives can only come to existence when the employees full discharges their assigned duties and responsibilities. Employees' performance portrays their achievement level on the duties and responsibility assigned to them in an organization. To Ifeyinwa, Henry and Ekechukwu (2016) performance is the role of individual aptitude, skill and effort in a given situation. Ndisya (2016) added that employees' performance is the ability of the employees' to perform the given function or assigned duties within the required timelines, and the required quality output of the work. In a simple term, employee performance refers to whether a person performs his/her job well or not. The performance of employees' in every organization largely depends on their individual attributes and confidence in what so ever they do.
The issue of low employees' job performance still remain one of the major factor that affect the well-being of many organization. To Ismail, Abdul-Halim & Joarder, (2015) employees' performance has become a source of worry to most organizations and institutions in Nigeria. Soieb, Othman and D"Silva (2013) opined that, employee engagement and performance has become an issue that keeps coming up and often debated by leaders in both the private and public sector. Ibietan & Ndukwe, (2014) took this a step further by stating that the performance of local government area council employees' has been receiving increasing attention in Nigeria over the years from both academic and civil society sectors. Local government area councils are created to render services to the people at the grassroots level. Jimoh, Olayide & Saheed (2012) opined that these services are highly essential to the sustenance of people at this level. However, when workers who are employed to discharge all these services on behalf of the government to the people are unable to perform their jobs as expected, problems arise as the expected social and economic service are barely executed . Muhammad, Muhammad and Samina (2017) concluded that the performance and services of every employee counts irrespective of the nature of their job and individual designations. Various factors such as self-efficacy, good working environment, training, motivation, salary, management policies, distributive justice and promotion encourage employees' to perform and give their best output.
The performance of employees may largely depend on their personal attributes and belief in oneself. The way and manner employees define tasks, employ strategies, view the possibility of success, belief and ultimately solve the problems and challenges they face differ. It is this concept of personal attributes that underlies the importance of self-efficacy as a critical component in job related performance. The existence of justice, especially when it comes to it relation with the management (distribution of rewards, supervision, promotions and appointments) is very important for an effective employees' performance. The Choice of self-efficacy and distributive justice as a predictor of employees' performance is hinge on the grounds that employees' perception and commitment of these variables in every organization influences their attitudes and behaviors which directly or indirectly have either a positive or negative impact on their performance.
Self-efficacy entails a person's self-beliefs in his or her ability to perform specific tasks. To Bandura (1977) Selfefficacy is self-evaluation of one's ability to successfully achieve plan of action necessary to achieve desired outcome. Lunenburg (2011) added that self-efficacy determines the tasks an employee chooses to learn and the targets they set for themselves. Shafig and Rand (2016) opined that one of the factors affecting employees' performance is the absence of self-efficacy. Bembenutty, (2006) added that Employees' cognitive and behavioral control as well as their efficacy beliefs is expected to be the basis of their ability to perform their jobs optimally. Cherian and Jacob (2013) noted that performance of the employees is positively influenced by the overall self-efficacy. Jacob and Jolly (2013) opined that high perseverance that is associated with self-efficacy will most definitely lead to increased performance and productivity. Krishnan, Loon, Ahmad and Yunus (2018) opined that employees' are attracted to the establishment of justice as one of the indicators of their job performance in an organization. Employees' reciprocate situations of perceived fairness practiced in their place of work with attitudes, skills and behaviors favorable to the organization (Colquitt, Scott, Rodell, Long, Zapata & Conlon 2013). The notion of distributive justice centers on the distribution of outcomes (e.g., rewards and incentives) and the perceived fairness of outcomes (Nagarajan & Donna 2017). To Marjo-Riitta, Ansgar and Abiola (2016) "Distributive justice refers to an individual's perceptions of fairness in an organization in terms of the outcomes received". Van, Dhurup and Joubert (2016) also defined "Distributive justice as a people's perception of the fairness of outcomes (benefits or punishment) as well as their evaluations of the end state of the allocation process". Faruk (2016) added that distributive justice has a positive and significant impact on employees' performance.
To this end, self-efficacy and distributive justice has become so pivotal that the success of many organizations is attributed to the application of these two variables. The magnitude and extend of their absent within the local government might be less or severe on the performance of the employees'. Therefore, the broad objective this study is to empirically examined the effect of self-efficacy and distributive justice on employees performance in FCT area councils Abuja.

Concept of Employee Performance
Performance is a concept designed to achieve results which is directly connected to the goals of an organization. To Bello and Adebajo (2014) the term performance describes how an employee carries out the tasks that make up the job.. Employees' performance indicates the effectiveness of employee's specific actions that contribute to attain organizational goals; it is defined as the way to perform the job tasks according to the prescribed job description. Khan & Jabbar (2013) opined that Employees' performance entails the employees' output and efficiency as a result of their contribution to the organisation. To Wasiu & Adebajo, (2014) Employees' performance is the totality of the financial and other non-financial rewards that an employees' receives in return for their labor or services. Suhartini (1995), as cited in Khan, Ur-Rehman & Dost, (2012) averted that employees' performance is a mutual result of effort, ability, and perception of tasks. This implies that a good performance results from efforts, ability and direction which is a step towards the achievement of organizational aims. Employee performance is therefore, viewed as the efficacy of employee's exact actions that contribute to attainment of organizational goals and objectives.
2.2 Concept of Self Efficacy Bandura (1994) described self-efficacy as a person's judgment of his or her ability to achieve or accomplish an action and supports the importance of a determinant for behavioral performance. To Fikran , Joyce and Merinda (2018) Self efficacy is an individual's belief or conviction that they can successfully achieve at a designated level on a task or attain a specific goal. Brockner (1988) and Kanter (2006) opined that self-efficacy is a kind of self-confidence or a task-specific version of selfesteem. Lunenburg (2011) added that self-efficacy (beliefs about one's ability to accomplish specific tasks) influences the tasks employees choose to learn and the goals they set for themselves. This study therefore, define self efficacy as the total belief and confidence in one's ability to perform the task assigned to him. Bandura (1997) identified major sources of self-efficacy to include past performance, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and emotional cues.

Concept of Distributive Justice
Distributive justice means the perceived fairness of results and outcomes along with how the decisions are undertaken at the end of appraisal process (Iqbal, Rehan , Fatima and Nawab 2017). Distributive justice entails the fairness of outcomes that exist when employees' perceived that they receive outcomes equitable with their contributions (Krishnan, Loon, Ahmad, binti, & Yunus 2018). To Marjo-Riitta, Ansgar and Abiola (2016) "distributive justice refers to an individual's perceptions of fairness in an organization in terms of the outcomes received". Zainalipour, Sheikhi and Mirkamali (2010) added that distributive justice is the most commonly acknowledged type of justice. This study therefore, viewed distributive justice as the perception of fairness in dealing with the employees' in all aspect of their jobs together with their reward.

Review of Empirical Literature
Ajala (2013) investigated whether Self-efficacy has anything to do with industrial employees' training, performance and wellbeing in Nigeria industrial settings. About 274 respondents took part in the study. Data were analyzed with t-test statistic and the finding revealed that workers with high self-efficacy are higher performers of assigned duties than those with low selfefficacy, workers with high level of self-efficacy are more amenable to training than those with low level of self -efficacy and workers with high self-efficacy are better in their well-being than those with low self -efficacy. Shafig and Rand (2016) examined the impact of self-efficacy on performance (An empirical study on business faculty members in Jordanian universities). The findings from the study showed that self-efficacy has a significant impact on the performance of faculty members. Jacob and Jolly (2013) also found out in their study that self-efficacy is related to work performance. Muhammad, Mula, Umer, Muhammad and Kamran (2016) investigated the impact of self-Efficacy on Employee's Job Performance in Health Sector of Pakistan. The results indicated that self-efficacy has significant relationship with job performance. Schmidt and Deshon (2009) examine the relationship between self-efficacy and performance by the degree of prior success or failure on a current task. Result from the study indicated that following poor or substandard performances, self-efficacy had a positive relationship with subsequent performance. Cervone and Wood (1995) found out that self-efficacy has a direct positive relationship with performance only when participants were given an overall goal and specific feedback about that goal.
Lisa, Russell and Zhen (2013) examined Justice and self-efficacy: Implications for influence on performance and satisfaction. Findings from the study indicate that self-efficacy is significantly related to performance than distributive justice perceptions and distributive Justice is more strongly related to satisfaction than it is to Performance Faramarz and Jamal (2015) found out that a significant positive relationship exist between distributive justice and self-efficacy of municipal employees. Faruk (2016) examined the impact of organizational justice on employee performance: A Survey in Turkey and Turkish Context. The hypotheses formulated were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) techniques. The findings of the study indicated that among the three aspects of organizational justice, distributive justice has a positive and significant impact on task performance. Muhammad, Muhammad, Anum and Samina (2017) conclude in their study on the impact of organizational justice on employee performance in public sector organization of Pakistan that distributive justice has a positive and significant impact on employee performance In summary, from the review of empirical literature, it is seen that most previous related study were conducted in other sectors other than the local government areas councils, largely using a non-probability sampling technique mostly in the form of convenience, purposive or judgmental in distributing their questionnaires, most of the sample sizes were small and grossly inadequate to have a fair finding. The current study filled this gap by examining a larger sample size, employed a proportionate stratified sampling technique in order to obtain a representative sample for the distribution of the questionnaire to the respondents. In addition to this, the study was carried out using local government area councils. This will present a comprehensive and inclusive depiction of the findings.

Theoretical Framework and Hypothesis Formulation
Two theories were considered as the theories underpinning this study; Situational theory and behavioral theory.

Self Efficacy Theory and Equity Theory
This theory was developed by Bandura in 1977. Self-efficacy entails the people's perception of their ability to plan and take action to reach a particular goal. Bandura (1977) hypothesized that self-efficacy affects choice of activities, effort, persistence, and achievement. Compared with persons who doubt their capabilities, those with high self-efficacy for accomplishing a task participate more readily, work harder, persist longer when they encounter difficulties, and achieve at a higher level. Bandura stated that self-efficacy played a role in determining how individuals felt, thought and motivated themselves, which then ultimately affected the behavior and the outcome. Efficacy beliefs influence the courses of action people choose to pursue, how much effort they put forth in given endeavors, how long they will persevere in the face of obstacles and failures, their resilience to adversity, whether their thought patterns are self-hindering or self-aiding, how much stress and depression they experience in coping with environmental demands, and the level of accomplishments they realize. An employee performances offer reliable guides for assessing self-efficacy. Bandura (1997) identified major sources of self-efficacy to include past performance, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and emotional cues.

Equity Theory
This theory was developed by Adams, J. S. in 1965. The fundamental principle of this theory is that a person will be given rewards for his contribution towards the output. This theory proposes that employees' are satisfied when they feel that their rewards have been equally given to them according to their input and there is no difference as compared to the others. Employees anticipate fair outcomes in terms of pay, incentives, benefits, and job security, recognition perks in exchange for his contribution in terms of education, effort, time, commitment and experiences to their jobs. If employee believes that his contributions are more than what he gets as reward, he would feel cheated and it will affect his satisfaction and consequently affect his performance. In simple term, the perception of unfair distribution may cause employees to exhibit low job performance.

Statement of Hypotheses
The following hypotheses were formulated in null form:  H01 Self efficacy does not have a significant effect on employees' performance in FCT area councils Abuja.  H02 Distributive justice does not have a significant effect on employees' performance in FCT area councils Abuja.

Research Methodology
A survey research design which is cross-sectional in nature was used for the purpose of this study; this is because a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from respondents at the same time as the researcher could not carry out a longitudinal study because of time constraint. The population of the study constitute of local government employees' with a sample size of 234. The sample size was determined using Krejcie and Morgan's (1970) table. In order to take care of response bias, improper filling or even non response by some respondents to return the questionnaire, 10% of the above minimum sample size was added. Twenty-three (23) respondents which is 10% of the sample size was added to the calculated sample size of 234; this led to a total of two hundred and fifty-seven (257) questionnaire that were administered across Bwari, kuje and abuja municipal area council (AMAC). The study employed a proportionate stratified sampling technique in order to obtain a representative sample for the distribution of the questionnaire to the respondents.

Data Analysis
The totals of 257 copies of questionnaire were distributed and 231 were retrieved. Data screening was carried out on the 231 retrieved questionnaires out of which 217 were found to be useful because of being correctly filled. Thus the analysis was based on 217 questionnaires duly filled and returned which represent of the total questionnaire distributed. The number of useful questionnaire was 217 (84.4%) which is a response rate considered sufficient for statistical reliability and generalization (Tabachnick & Fidell, cited in Aminu, 2015).  Table 2, present the gender distribution of the respondents. 63.1% of the respondents were male while the remaining 36.9% were Female. This implies that there are more male respondents than female respondents. The age distribution was also presented in table 1. 14.3% were of age between 18 -25 years, 26.3% were of age 26 -35 years, 39.6% were of age 36 -45 years and 19.8% were of age 46 years and above. This implies that most of the respondents are of age between 36 -45years.
The education qualification of respondent was also presented. 6% of the respondent have First school leaving certificate, 12.9% SSCE has their maximum qualification, 16.1% has OND/NCE, 61.8% has B.Sc./HND and 3.2% has MSc./Ph.D.

Measurement Model
The measurement model in figure 1 shows the indicators loading on their intended factors. The simple factor structure, by rule of thumb taken to mean that composite reliability should be greater than 0.7 and average variance expectation should be greater than 0.5. (Garson, 2016). Indicators that do not met this prerequisite were removed to increase the composite reliability and average variance expectation of other items.   Table 3 shows the Factor Loading, Cronbach Alpha, Composite Reliability (CR) and Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values for all latent constructs after Pooled CFA has been performed. All constructs have achieved the minimum estimation required; 0.70 (Cronbach Alpha), 0.60 (CR) and 0.50 (AVE). Therefore, it can be concluded that Convergent Validity (AVE _ 0.5), Internal Reliability (Cronbach Alpha _ 0.6) and Construct Reliability (CR _ 0.60) of all constructs had been achieved. Therefore, the model is good enough for the analysis.  Table 4 shows the Fornell-Lacker criterion (1981) is a common and conservative approach to assess discriminant validity and it can be applied in PLS-SEM.The diagonal value (in bold) is the square root of AVE,while other values are the correlations between the respective latent construct. The discriminant validity is achieved when a diagonal value (in bold) is higher than the values in its row and column. Referring to table 3, it can be concluded that discriminant validity for all constructs are achieved.

Bootstrapping Analysis (Structural Model)
Bootstrapping analysis is conducted to determine the direct effect. This was done by using 5000 sub-samples with 217 cases as presented in figure 2.

Figure 2. Structural Model
Structural equation model (SEM) was used to determine the relationship between self-efficacy and distributive justice on employee performance. with (p value 0.000 < 0.1) and self-efficacy has a positive and significant effect on employee performance with (P value 0.000< 0.1). As a result the null hypothesis that stated; distributive justice and self-efficacy has no significant relationship on employee performance are rejected. Also the coefficient of determination (R2) was also assessed. From the PLS Path model estimation diagram (see Figure 1), the overall R2 is found to be relatively strong. Threshold value of 0.25, 0.5 and 0.7 are often used to describe a weak, moderate, and strong coefficient of determination (Hair, Ringle & Sarstedt, 2013). In this case, the two constructs distributive justice and self-efficacy can jointly explain 84.9% of the variance of the endogenous construct employee performance.

Effect Size
The effect size of the exogenous variable on the endogenous variable was assessed by means of f2 proposed by Cohen (1988), the criteria are that, 0.35 is large, 0.15 is moderate and 0.02 is small. This was analyzed in the table below. Threshold value of 0.02, 0.35 and 0.845 are often used to describe a weak, moderate, and strong coefficient of determination. In this case, the effect size of 1.9 is regarded as a strong effect. From table 5, specifically, dropping distributive justice will led to a greater drop in the explained variance than dropping the other variable. Distributive justice is thus the most important explanatory variable of the model.

Conclusion and Recommendations
The study therefore concludes that both distributive justice and self-efficacy has a significant and positive impact on local government area council's employees' performance in FCT Abuja. For the performance of these employees to improve, the study therefore recommends that the management / leaders of local government area councils should encourage the operation of distribution justice knowing fully that every employee expects an appropriate reward in exchange for his or her work. To motivate employees to perform their jobs optimally, there is the need to improve the self-efficacy of the employees through effective programs such as training and other initiatives. This in turn will help them to successfully perform more complex tasks.